It seems like only yesterday that skeptics of Barack Obama's birth in Hawaii rushed to the Supreme Court to try to block the son of an American mother and Kenyan father from taking office as president. Seven years later, Canadian-born Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is facing similar scrutiny.

Here are some answers to questions about the constitutional requirements to be president, and Cruz's situation:

A:Article II sets out just three qualifications: The president must be at least 35 years old, a resident of the United States for 14 years and "a natural born citizen." This last phrase has periodically spawned questions about presidential candidates who were born, or rumored to have been born, outside the United States. less

Q: What does the Constitution say?

A:Article II sets out just three qualifications: The president must be at least 35 years old, a resident of the United States for 14 years and "a natural born citizen." This ... more

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Q: Where was Cruz born?

A: He was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1970, and has released his birth certificate to prove it. His parents were then working in the oil business. His mother, Eleanor, is from Delaware, while his father, Rafael, is a Cuban who became a U.S. citizen in 2005.

A: Yes, Cruz is a U.S. citizen. He also was a Canadian citizen until he renounced that in 2014.

Q: Does that make him a citizen?

A: Yes, Cruz is a U.S. citizen. He also was a Canadian citizen until he renounced that in 2014.

Photo: Jasper Juinen, Getty Images

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Q: Shouldn't that be the end of the story?

A: The Constitution's phrase, "natural born citizen" isn't used elsewhere in the document or otherwise explained. It suggests to some people that only people born in the United States qualify as natural born, though many scholars reject that reading. It was speculation that Obama was born outside the country, even though his mother was American, that fueled the so-called birther movement.

A: It's hard to answer definitively because the issue has never been resolved by U.S. courts or by the political process. The most common explanation is that someone who is a U.S. citizen at birth — with no need to go through the process of becoming a naturalized citizen — is a natural born citizen. That's the case made last year by a pair of former top Justice Department officials, Republican Paul Clement and Democrat Neal Katyal, in the online Harvard Law Review Forum.

Under a law dating from the first Congress, which included men who drafted the Constitution, Cruz is a natural born citizen because his mother is an American, regardless of where he was born, Clement and Katyal wrote. That understanding of the constitutional phrase is consistent with the framers' intent "to prevent someone who did not have a lifetime attachment to the United States from becoming president," said University of San Diego law professor Michael Ramsey.

A: In short, because the Supreme Court has never weighed in on the question and is unlikely to, scholars said. "It's the kind of question that the courts are almost allergic to and will stay away from if they can," said Temple University law professor Peter Spiro. He said the issue falls into the category of political questions that courts prefer to let Congress and the president answer.

The consensus among legal elites makes court intervention even less likely, he said. One practical problem for challengers is the difficulty of showing they have been harmed, without which they have no right to be in court in the first place.

A: When questions arose in 2008 about Republican nominee John McCain's eligibility to serve because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution stating that McCain was a natural born citizen. Among the resolution's sponsors were then-Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

But, on Saturday, he donned a Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform, planted small Canadian flags and a photo of Cruz's face over a maple leaf in the ground outside of a rally hosted by the freshman senator's super PAC, The Washington Post reported.

The protester, who has refused to identify himself to the press or name his affiliations, also handed out copies of Cruz's birth certificate, according to the newspaper.

"I just don't want, really, a Canadian in office," the protester told The Washington Post. "It seems like he's got a lot of controversy behind him whether he's a U.S.-born citizen or not and I'm just out here making a statement."

Tying Cruz to the Canadian band Nickelback — whose members grew up in Alberta, the same Canadian province where the Texas senator was born — has the double, but obscure, whammy of reminding primary voters of the questions raised by Trump while also implying that Cruz has terrible musical taste.

However, the band took the protester's jabs in stride in a Jan. 11 tweet, "NICKELBACK Employee of the Month. January 2016. #Election2016 #Nickelback4President"

But, when asked about his favorite Nickelback song, the protester told the Post, "I don't like Nickelback."